What Happened at Slate This Week?

Slate’s science editor on her favorite reads from Slate this week.

I’m Laura Helmuth, Slate’s science and health editor. Most of my work here is behind the scenes. I commission stories from scientists and freelance writers, run the Wild Things blog, encourage staff writers to write science stories, and provide reality checks when a culture or politics story has a science angle. Is there a science story we should be covering? Contact me anytime.

I was trying to be polite by mentioning other editors’ stories before my own. Let’s get to the good stuff.

Cassini is the greatest mission in the history of space flight (get in line, Mars rovers and Apollo), and this week was its 10th anniversary of reaching Saturn. Phil Plait, our Bad Astronomy writer, has a gorgeous photo gallery of Cassini’s best images. It’s stunning.

Also stunning was Facebook’s disregard of basic research ethics. Katy Waldman was one of the first to call it out for its laughable “informed consent” policy, and David Auerbach suggested that for Facebook’s next experiment, it divide users into “prisoners” and “guards.” Will Oremus followed up with the news that Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg apologized that “we never meant to upset you” about a study that was meant to upset you.

One of the things we’re considering doing for Slate Plus is soliciting members’ questions when we’re brainstorming about what to ask an expert for these sorts of stories. (Sample from the sharks piece: What do sharks do in a hurricane?) Our internal emails here get interesting fast, and I think it’d be fun to include you in them when we brainstorm. Anybody game? Let us know in the comments.